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Name: Grace Howard

Year: Senior (Class of 2023)

Major: Psychology

Internship site: Minneapolis VA (Veterans Affairs) Medical Center, Service to Science Scholars Research Program (SSS-RP)

What were your duties during the internship?

My internship focused on mental health research that is being conducted at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. As such, I had the great opportunity to have two mentors who are both clinician investigators at the VA. This means that they, as clinical psychologists, divide their time between research and clinical practice. I worked with Dr. Carol Chu, who is a suicide risk and prevention researcher, and Dr. Jacob Finn, who is a TBI (traumatic brain injury) rehabilitation and outcomes researcher. I got to meet with both of them regularly and have conversations about their work, their areas of research, and what it’s like to be a clinical psychologist in a healthcare setting. I found these meetings extremely helpful, but I was also happy to help out on projects like data entry, creation of materials related to participant retention, and creation of materials for studies (ex: procedural checklist and entering questions into software used for ecological momentary assessment, or app-based questionnaires). I also spent time catching up on the body of literature on both my mentors’ fields so that I would have a better theoretical understanding from which to build. My cohort attended professional development seminars, research seminars, and a weekly class on data analysis and visualization using R and R-Studio in addition to our various responsibilities to our mentors and their projects. The professional development seminars were very helpful, as we went over lab structure, grants, posters, how to give an elevator pitch, and most importantly, some of what to expect from being a research-oriented clinical psychologist.

What did you learn during your internship?

In addition to the skills that I developed, I learned what a career as a clinical psychologist can look like in the real world, and especially outside the world of university professorship. It opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities I hadn’t considered. More importantly, I got a feel for whether I found careers like those of my mentors appealing. For me, this experience taught me that I do want to be a clinical psychologist, and gave me some professional skills for reaching that goal. I learned what to look for in graduate programs for research, and I took the GRE in preparation for applications. I learned about research grants and how research is funded, which gave me helpful insight into administrative expectations for a career similar to that of my mentors.
I also learned that I know more than I thought I did. I wasn’t sure, going into the program, how prepared I would be compared to the others in my cohort, some of whom were already admitted to doctoral programs. I have to say that I realized through my internship that I was ready far beyond my own expectations and that I was capable of actually being helpful and contributing to real-life, professional-level research.

Finally, I learned useful skills, including some basic R and R-Studio skills for data analysis and visualization, professional-development skills, and strengthened my research skills! It was extremely beneficial to me to have the opportunity to discuss my mentors’ research with them and to be able to ask them both theoretical and practical questions ranging from “how is this part theorized to work with this other thing” to “why use this scale over another scale” and “how reliable is this scale?”

How did the work connect to your education at Saint Mary’s?

I was constantly drawing on everything I learned in my classes at Saint Mary’s. I was so thankful for my experiences here that allowed me to be so prepared for a research internship like the one in which I participated. I can find connections between almost every psychology class I took and the skills I used in my internship: general research skills and knowledge of different measures from scientific research in psychology, interviewing skills from clinical and counseling psychology, research methods and process knowledge from the body image collaborative research lab, data analysis skills from quantitative analysis, and much more. My mentors made comments on how they were impressed that they didn’t have to explain certain parts of the research process to me, and I was happy to be able to engage in discussion with them on a more knowledgeable level. As a part of the internship, my cohort attended data analysis and visualization seminars that used R-Studio as the software. I had no clue how to use R or code at all before this experience, but I found myself helping to explain it to others because my professors had prepared me to think critically and understand the analysis, even if I was completely new to the program.

Overall, I found that my psychology education at Saint Mary’s prepared me amazingly well for this internship, surpassing my own expectations.

How will this experience help you after you graduate from Saint Mary’s?

This experience has helped me decide what I want my next steps to be after graduation and how to reach them. More than that, I know that having had the opportunity to take part in a research internship like the one I did at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center this summer will be a great help in showing my preparation and skills for graduate programs that will be looking at my experience. I know that I will draw heavily on this experience in terms of having professional and applied experience already in my chosen field. I do think that the most important thing it will help me with is confidence. I know, because I did this internship, that I can meet standards and contribute to psychology research in a professional setting.

Name: Maeve A Hastings

Year: Senior

Major: Psychology

Internship Site: Association House of Chicago

What were your duties during the internship?

I worked as a Rehabilitation Services Associate (RSA) at a Psychosocial Rehabilitation (PSR) program. Every day I would work closely with adults with serious mental illness (SMI) with groups focused on independent living, medication and symptom management, building interpersonal relationships, and other areas with the focus of helping the participants gain independence and eventually live on their own. My personal responsibilities included co-administration of group therapy, the completion of case notes, and serving breakfast each day for the participants. Primarily, when I would be administering groups on my own at the end of my internship, I would use art therapy techniques in order to help my participants communicate their symptoms and feelings where it might have otherwise been difficult to vocalize.

What did you learn during your internship?

I really learned a lot about presentations of schizophrenia, as the majority of the participants in the program were individuals with schizophrenia. I also learned more about PSR programs as a whole and was able to see firsthand what psychosocial rehabilitation is able to do for social skills building and independence fostering. I also learned how some individuals with SMIs can learn to live independent lives, working with their illnesses instead of against it.

How did the work connect to your education at Saint Mary’s?

My experience this summer was a part of the internship requirement in the psychology major, and as such, I am incorporating what I learned into my senior psychology capstone, which will be presented on Dec. 3 at the Psychology Symposium. I was also able to utilize a lot of the classes I’d taken for my major, including Clinical and Counseling, Learning and Cognition, and a class I had taken outside of my major, which was Introduction to Arts and Healing. These classes helped me utilize skills in order to properly serve the population I was interacting with on a daily basis. Some of my participants had been in the program for over a decade, and they were very interested to hear the more scientific side of psychology, helping them further understand their disorders. So, being able to utilize and teach, at a very basic level, the skills I’d learned in my classes was very helpful.

How will this experience help you after you graduate from Saint Mary’s?

Something invaluable I learned was how the clinical field of psychology can function. I learned skills that will put me a step above my peers in graduate programs and will set me up to succeed when I do my clinical internships at the end of my graduate career. I also made a lot of networking connections within the field, which will be invaluable after I finish my education. It also allowed me firsthand experience with individuals with SMIs, which I was fortunate to have as an undergraduate student. I think that if a student has a chance, even if it isn’t required, they should complete an internship in the field they hope to enter.

WINONA, Minn. — Homecoming week — and all the activities that come with it — are a major highlight for any high school student, especially for seniors. When Matthew Schell was a senior at Lewiston-Altura High School, he missed most of the homecoming fanfare as he was studying for college midterms at Saint Mary’s University instead.

Looking back, the Altura, Minn., native says he doesn’t regret it. The experience helped prepare and propel him toward a successful undergraduate experience. And, it helped him get into a competitive cancer research program at South Dakota State University.

Schell was dual enrolled at Saint Mary’s as part of Minnesota’s Postsecondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program. The PSEO program allows motivated high school juniors and seniors the chance to earn college credit while completing high school graduation requirements.

Growing up the son of a veterinarian, Schell always gravitated toward the medical field. Early on, though, he came to realize the veterinary sciences weren’t for him.

“I liked the human aspect of medicine,” he said. “And having a love of STEM and chemistry, I really knew medical school would be my best course of action.”

With the lofty goal of medical school, Schell soon started looking into ways he could advance his goal. The obvious option was Minnesota’s PSEO program.

“I didn’t find myself being challenged in my coursework in high school, so I began looking at options where I could get the challenge I wanted while also better preparing myself for a future career,” he said.

Having had a brother who enrolled at Saint Mary’s as a part of the PSEO program, and knowing the “rigor and challenge” of its academic offerings, Schell said knowing where to enroll was an easy decision. At Saint Mary’s, Schell was able to take care of a majority of his general education requirements like English and history, while also being able to dive head-first into entry-level biology and chemistry courses. The opportunity to take these courses vaulted him in his ability to succeed as a full-time undergraduate student.

Now a first-year undergraduate student at South Dakota State University, Schell is studying biochemistry, pre-medicine, and psychology, and, as a first-year, was selected to take part in research on campus, something he said he would not have been able to achieve without his experience in the PSEO program at Saint Mary’s.

“Dr. Scott Carnahan, my chemistry professor (at Saint Mary’s), prepared me for my courses like organic and analytic chemistry and really helped me land a research position that I’m working with right now,” he said. “The research focuses a lot in the area of biology, so my (PSEO college) courses with Dr. Matthew Rowley really helped me get a fundamental understanding of what I’m working on.”

Currently, Schell and his team are researching how cancerous cells react to drugs that are synthesized by another lab on campus.

“It’s really great work we’re doing,” he said. “And as soon as the research is published, I believe it will really help a lot in where we’re able to go in the future in regards to fighting cancer because every little bit of information is critical.”
Schell says his time at Saint Mary’s has aided him outside of the classroom and research lab as well.

“My experience at Saint Mary’s helped me be able to balance coursework and extracurriculars. And learning that experience early on helped me get ahead of my classes at the beginning of the semester,” he said. “And because Saint Mary’s has such a diverse community, I’ve been able to work with a variety of people and have been able to understand diverse perspectives, while also being able to grow myself and develop my own perspectives.”

Schell encourages anyone considering the PESO program to pursue it.

“I believe any individual who goes through the program can have the same positive experience as me,” he said.